Unmarked
by themarshal
Summary: She always said that scars were evidence of moments in her life that left a mark. But when she was reborn, they were gone. Lost like everything else when she had died. Where did that leave her? A woman without a past? Strange the things that we cling to.


Alice Shepard let out a sigh and shut off the shower. There was clean, then there was relaxed, then there was wasting water. She probably passed the last one about ten minutes earlier.

She reached out for one of the large, fluffy towels hanging outside the shower and buried her face in it. Even after so many years with those towels, she still couldn't get used to how soft and luxuriant they felt against her skin. After a childhood on the streets followed by over a decade in military service, there were a great many seemingly simple luxuries that she still couldn't quite accept. But a soft towel after a long, hot shower was one luxury she was determined to get used to.

She shook her head, whipping her crimson hair back and forth. It slapped against her face and scattered droplets of water everywhere. She smiled and ran the towel over her head. Shaking herself dry was one of the few silly, childish things she still enjoyed doing; a remnant from her past, when she used to call herself an 'Ali-cat', and had occasionally behaved as such.

As she dried her hair, she ran her tongue across her lips. She paused her drying routine, shoulders slumping slightly. It had recently been pointed out to her that she did the tongue thing on a regular basis. She reasoned that she had gotten into the habit because she liked the feel of the scar that ran from her top lip to her chin.

Except that it wasn't there. And it never would be again. None of them would be. She had died, truly died, and none of that 'the brink of death' crap either. She was frozen meat and tubes in a battered carapace of armor when she was recovered. And when she had been rebuilt, things had been… different. She turned her head and looked at her naked profile in the mirror. Outwardly she looked the same: crimson hair; blue eyes; freckles. Lips that were a little too big for her liking. A jawline that meant she always had to face cameras head-on to get a good picture. It all seemed to be there. Miranda always assured her that everything was in place, that physically and mentally she was the person she was before, but Alice had never fully believed her. For one, she now healed so fast that scars ceased to form on her body. Maybe it was a side-effect of something the Lazarus team had done to speed up the healing process when they were rebuilding her. She looked closer at herself in the full-length mirror, peering through the thick layer of fog that had built up on it. Others might never have noticed, but she did. She wasn't the same.

Her scars were gone.

They were such silly things to miss, scars. They were just blemishes, marks left on the body from improperly healed wounds. Some people spent good money trying to get rid of their scars, and here she was longing for hers. But they had been a part of her. More than that, some of them had _defined_ her. They had told the story of who she was and what she had been through.

She slowly started tracing her fingertips along her face, around her unblemished cheek to her lips. The missing sliver of discolored skin on her lips had been a goodbye from her former lover when she had left the Reds to join the Alliance. Down her chin and neck, her fingers glided to her left shoulder, where there had been an angry, tattered mess of scars so big that she could barely cover it all with her entire hand. Those had been courtesy of the Reaper, Sovereign. When she defeated it at the battle of the Citadel, a piece of it had nearly crushed her. She let her hand drop to her hip, where a few years ago there would have been a broad four-inch long gash across her waistline. She had always told people that she got it while "picking up groceries" when she was running with gangs during her teenage years back on Earth. It had made her sound tough. But the truth of it was that she had fallen hard during her first attempt at escaping the orphanage where she spent her childhood. Even the stories that the scars told had stories of their own.

And they were gone.

The stories might still be there, but it wasn't the same. It was like going back in time before there were recordings or books or even written language. Back to a time when stories had to be spoken aloud in order to be shared. In those times stories evolved and changed. From one person to the next they'd be reworked. Details would get lost or altered. Events would be misremembered. Things would be different. But that's not how they _happened_. It wasn't the _truth_.

After she had died, her story had been told. Well, _a _story had been told, at least. People couldn't help themselves. The 'Hero of the Citadel' made for such a great tale. A rogue Spectre. An army of killer machines. Betrayal. Loss. Defiance. Victory. Various versions of her exploits had been used for everything from recruitment vids to selling underwear. Because the battle which could have heralded the beginning of the extinction of all sentient life in the galaxy really made one think about women's underwear.

And just like in the times when stories were relayed solely by word of mouth, the details had gotten mixed up, changed to suit the desires of the storyteller. But in the dark days before the written word had been invented, the _purpose_ of the stories – the 'moral' so to speak – was always preserved. That was important. And that was what had been lost this time.

The Reapers. The impending doom of the galaxy. Nobody had cared about that. That part had always been left out. By the time she had come back after being dead for two years, it had been as if the Reapers never happened. The very idea that Sovereign had been anything but a hyper-advanced geth warship was relegated to the realm of fantasy. _Her_ fantasy. As though the story she told – _the truth_ – was somehow just her interpretation of some other story that someone else had fabricated. She no longer owned the story. It was no longer hers.

The scars… They had been a solid reminder of the truth. Evidence of what had _actually_ happened in her life. The story of her life – unadulterated, unfiltered – told on the body of the one who had experienced it. And they were gone. No more evidence. No more proof. All she had were stories.

And that had scared her. How could she remember the events as they really happened if they weren't written on her body in broken tissue? In those first few years after the defeat of the Reapers, when things had settled and she'd had too much time to think, she had spent a great deal of time thinking about her past. She'd tried writing, tried chronicling the events of her life starting at childhood. Not for any monetary purposes, though _man alive_ did she ever receive offers for her memoirs… She had just needed to remember who she was and what she had done, what she had been through, in as much detail as possible.

And one day she decided to visit a tattoo parlor and get her old N7 tattoo redone. Absent-mindedly, Alice reached up to her right shoulder and traced the outline of the white 'N7' and the red triangle that made up the logo. She'd gotten the original tattoo after completing the Alliance's Special Forces training with the highest proficiency rating. It felt good to have it back. Better than it should have felt, given how little she had cared for the Alliance in those days following the war… But it was a fixed point in her past, with memories of the harshness of the training and the success and pride she felt for the achievement. And there it was, chronicled on her body once more.

A few days later – faster than most people would have been able to heal – she had gone back, getting the sweeping Spectre logo tattooed on her right shoulder blade. While the needle dug into her flesh, she distinctly remembered how it had felt to stand before the Citadel Council and be granted the title of Spectre, to have been the first human to receive that honor. The moment had been so clear to her, every little detail. The low gravity on the Presidium, the color of the asari councilor's facial markings, the sound of the armor she was wearing made when she moved. It was perfect.

Back she went, again and again. Each time the needle pierced her skin the moments in her life had coalesced into fact. The three-pronged Shadow Broker insignia. The Cerberus logo, shattered. The brand she had been given when she joined the 10th Street Reds back on Earth. Bit by bit, her story had begun to unfold on her body once more. Ink in place of flesh.

She had borne them with pride, spattered about her shoulders, arms, and upper back as they were. She would wear thin-strapped tank tops, long after the cooling weather had called for more appropriate attire, just to show them off. Her display had caught the attention of an asari tattoo artist, a _true_ artist. The logos Alice had dotted around her body were just that: logos. Simple designs that could have been found anywhere. After several discussions and a handful of awkward joinings – to get the details right, Alice told herself – the asari had begun to weave a tale onto the canvas that was Alice's body. She had gone so far as to incorporate the existing logos into the story that Alice had been telling. It was breathtaking to behold. It was beautiful. And it was unfinished.

The story of her life told in ink spanned Alice's entire upper back, weaving over her right shoulder down to her elbow, trailing down her right side almost to her hip, giving her the appearance that she had been dipped into some starry, otherworldly liquid. She let her towel drop to the floor and brought her hands to her stomach, just off to the side of her navel. There, a tiny blue star was forming, swirling out of the mists of the tale that had been told up until that point. When finished, it would have represented her daughter, the life that she would help bring into this world, the first act of true creation that she would have taken part in.

And she had left it unfinished. Not because she had wanted the story to end, or because the meaning behind the tattoos had diminished. There had been a moment when she had first seen the sonogram of the little life, when she heard the rapid _whump-whump_ of the tiny heartbeat that she had realized her mistake. She had been focused on making sure the past, _her_ past was set in stone; that her tale, that the events of her life, were chronicled properly. And in one moment, she knew all of that was crap.

At the birth of her daughter, she had tentatively reached out a finger, unsure whether she could or should touch the baby safely. A tiny, warm, wrinkled blue hand had grasped her finger. Tears had streamed down Alice's face. It was then that she had realized that the past wasn't going to be anywhere nearly as important as the future. That her life and the events that she had lived only mattered insofar as they pertained to the life of her daughter, of her future.

Blue arms snaked around Alice's naked torso, giving her a start, dragging her back to the present. She closed her eyes and smiled, leaning back into her bondmate's embrace. "She finally asleep?" she asked.

Liara nodded. "Admiring the view?" she asked, whispering into Alice's ear.

Alice chuckled softly, realizing how silly she must have looked, standing stark naked in the bathroom gazing into the mirror with her towel lying at her feet. "Just… making sure everything's still there," she replied, leaning her head against Liara's.

"Hmm…" Liara cooed, nuzzling her nose against Alice's neck. "If you like, I could give you an inspection. I am a doctor, you know."

Alice's smile widened. A shiver ran up her legs. "Yeah, a doctor of _Archaeology_…" she mused.

Liara ran her lips along Alice's earlobe. "I have _some_ experience with human physiology…," her words barely more than a breath against Alice's skin.

"I'll bet you do." Alice reached up and caressed Liara's cheek, her silvery bondmate bracelet jangling briefly as it slid down her wrist. The past wasn't forgotten. It was just as important as anything else. But the facts that had come before were secondary to what the future held, where she was now: the sleeping child in the next room; the warm embrace of her bondmate; their life together; their future together. All of that was unwritten. Her life would remain unfinished.

Just as it should be.


End file.
